Blog 4/5: Looking at The Great Awakening

In the textbook section, Colonial Religion and the Great Awakening, it focuses more on the effects of the Great Awakening, such as the splitting into factions of various churches, the criticism of ministers, the large crowds, etc. The primary sources focus more inward on personal conversion. Nowhere in those sources is mentioned purifying the churches or criticizing the ministers. In fact, on page 144, George Whitefield says, “my end in preaching was not to sow divisions, but to propagate the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ.” I’m sure the textbook gives an accurate account of what happened as a result of the Great Awakening, but it doesn’t address what seems to be the purpose of it all, according to the primary sources provided: personal conversion for lots of people, not broad changes in church structure itself. The fact that Nathan Cole and George Whitefield do not express a desire to reform the churches is a place of disconnect between these primary sources and the textbook, which emphasizes challenges to the establishment.

Kidd comments on the question of why the Great Awakening happened. This is a very difficult question to answer because it involved people from Europe and America, and you would have to examine social climates, religious and secular ideas, perhaps even economics, from multiple regions on two different continents. Also, when things happen in such quick succession, it’s difficult to pinpoint which events caused which other events. People are also a lot more likely to record what happened rather than why they think something happened, so I would assume that we have few records that can assist in answering this question. Additionally, these record keepers would be involved in the situation, giving them a highly biased view of why the Great Awakening happened. Their speculations would be less meaningful to us, who are more divorced from the situation.